The Years of Fire (34 page)

Then, in the living room, where the light from a street lamp came faintly through the venetian blinds, he saw a figure lying on the sofa in a strange position, one arm flung across her face and the other trailing on the carpet.

His heart began pounding so furiously in his chest that he could barely breathe.

“Mademoiselle Loiseau,” he murmured, terrified and befuddled.

She didn’t move. Her stillness filled the room like a thick, viscous liquid on the point of bursting through the walls. He leapt forward and seized her hand. It fell back to the floor, absolutely lifeless.

But then she emitted a faint groan. Quickly, almost violently, he removed the arm from her face. Her mouth was half open, her skin pale. She had sunk into a terrible sleep, the kind from which it seemed there would be no return. He shook her with all his strength, shouting at her to wake up. Her mouth opened again and another groan escaped her lips. Her face was hideous.

“Oh God,” he cried, standing back. “She’s dying and it’s my fault.”

He stared at her, appalled. Her forehead glistened with sweat, and he saw her eyes begin to flutter. He must call an ambulance. But not from there. It was too risky. He hurried out the door, down the staircase, and began running along the street looking for a pay phone. As he ran he kept repeating to himself: “I killed her. The Blond Angel, I killed her!” His tears mingled with the sweat that stung his eyes.

He saw a phone booth at the corner of a parking lot. In an instant he was talking to a 911 operator.

“Address? Just a minute!”

In his distress he couldn’t remember it. Fortunately he still had De Bané’s list. He fumbled furiously in one pocket, then another, uttering a string of swear words punctuated by sobs. Finally he found it.

“Hurry, for Chrissakes! She’s dying. Dying! My name?”

He almost gave it, but a scrap of lucidity held him back. He hung up the phone and ran away as though the police were already on his heels. He ran all the way to rue Ontario, then stopped, out of breath. He thought
about returning to the Blond Angel’s apartment to make sure that the ambulance was there and she was being taken care of. But he was afraid of drawing attention to himself. What could he do?

He could drink. He could drink a lot, to settle the turbulence that was coursing through his head. He thought of going to the Orleans, and headed in that direction. Nadine would sell him a beer under the counter, he was sure of it. And maybe De Bané would be there. He’d be very happy to run into De Bané! It would be his farewell to Montreal. The city didn’t need an angel-killer.

I
t was nearly one o’clock in the morning. Fernand and Lucie were sleeping, and Céline was watching television, sitting on the rug close to the set, which was turned down low.
Rosemary’s Baby
was on, a Polanski film that one of her friends had said was terrific. Since she couldn’t sleep, and her math class the next day was cancelled, she thought it was a good chance to stay up and watch it.

It started out as a story of a young couple in love but soon began to take a sinister turn, and she was beginning to feel afraid. She would have liked Charles to have been there with her, or at least Henri, but they had both left the house after supper and God alone knew what they were up to.

How horrid she would feel if she found herself in Rosemary’s shoes! Carrying a thing in her belly for nine months that came straight from Hell! She couldn’t watch. She wanted to turn a light on, since the living room was lit only by the glow from the TV screen and seemed almost as frightening as the movie.

Suddenly she heard the knob on the front door squeak and someone coming into the vestibule. Which of the two had come in? She obviously hoped it was Charles, and turned to watch the gap in the living-room door to see who passed it. And it was Charles. In the split second it took him to pass the opening she could tell that something was wrong. His head was bowed and he seemed to walk with a shaky step.

She jumped to her feet. Just as she came out of the living room she saw his bedroom door close.

“Charles,” she said, bringing her mouth close to his door. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

There was no response from within.

“What’s the matter, Charles?” she whispered, more and more concerned. “Is something wrong?”

She heard a deep sigh coming from her parents’ room, and the bed gave a dry, imperious squeak, as though ordering her to be quiet.

Frightened, she waited a moment; then, in an almost inaudible whisper, she called Charles again. This time she heard steps approaching the other side of the door.

“Leave me alone!” the young man said in a hoarse and curiously guttural whisper, as though he were choking back sobs.

Céline stepped back, suddenly chilled. She remained in the hall for a few moments, wondering if she should overcome her fear and go into the room, then she went back to the living room instead. She turned off the television and went to bed.

But it was a long night! She slept for five or six minutes, then suddenly opened her eyes, her mind as clear and racing as though it were mid-afternoon. She listened, jumping at the tiniest sounds, trying to figure out where they came from. She thought of Charles, and only of Charles. A plethora of details passed through her mind, some she hadn’t paid much attention to earlier: his sudden bursts of irritability over the past few weeks, especially aimed at Henri (when he’d always been so easy to get along with), and his secretiveness and mistrust, the way he went out nearly every night. According to Fernand he was simply “out on the prowl,” and Lucie, more elegantly, said he was old enough now to be interested in girls, and added that she hoped he would find one who would please him and stay with him. Henri didn’t say anything. All he did was roll his eyes, or snigger behind his hand and look away.

Céline didn’t put much stock in Charles’s supposed amorous adventuring, partly because when someone runs after a lot of girls it’s usually
because none of them is very interesting. But she also thought there was something else going on; there was the way he talked to her now, so different from how a brother talks to his sister! But mostly it was the air of unhappiness that had hardly left him for the past few weeks: that wasn’t at all how a boy behaved when he was chasing after girls. Of course she wasn’t naive enough to think that he hadn’t had his adventures.… Steve Lachapelle, whose mouth sometimes worked faster than his brain, had let something slip a while ago about a girl named Marlene. Céline had been instantly jealous. But Charles had never brought anyone to the house, never spoken of anyone, and for several months now hadn’t seemed to be seeing anyone special. In the end, Céline felt nothing for this Marlene person but indifference.

No, there was something else afoot, something serious, and she was sure Henri knew what it was. She’d tried a few times to worm it out of him, but he hadn’t responded with anything but vague stories he was obviously making up, or an abrupt order to mind her own business. What could be going on? Nothing really terrible, she was sure, because she didn’t think a person like Charles would get mixed up in anything like that. It must have something to do with his father. With that man, anything was possible. He could be forcing his son to do something he didn’t want to do. If only she had the courage to talk to Charles directly, or if he would come to her to confide in her, share whatever it was that was tormenting him, everything would be out in the open, and the two of them could surely find a solution.

Two or three times she got out of bed and tiptoed to the hallway to listen. Once she thought she heard a strangled sob, but with her father’s deep snoring she couldn’t be sure. His room was across the hall from Charles’s.

Then she was suddenly overcome by exhaustion and fell dead asleep. She woke up feeling that she had climbed out of a deep, cotton-filled chasm, and that it had taken all her strength and left her with a feeling of deep sadness; she was almost sick to her stomach. How long had she slept? It was nearly morning. Then she suddenly sat straight up in bed. Something had happened, something she could sense only confusedly. But it had to do with Charles.

Her intuition was confirmed when she heard slight creaks coming from the hallway, followed by the squeaking of the door lock again: someone had just left the house!

She jumped out of bed, ran to the vestibule, and, pulling aside the curtains on the door, saw Charles disappearing around a corner with his backpack. His backpack? Where the devil was he off to? And why so early? According to her watch it was only twenty after five. She ran back into her room, took off her pyjamas, and climbed into her jeans.

Lucie appeared in the doorway.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, pulling a sweater over her head. “I don’t have time right now.”

“But where are you going? Don’t you realize what time it is?”

Without even looking at her mother, Céline ran out the door. An instant later she was dashing down the street, and then she was gone. To Lucie, it was as though the city had swallowed her up.

She ran for a minute, maybe two, hoping to catch up to Charles, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. She stopped. Where could he have gone? Maybe he was waiting for a bus on rue Ontario. At this time in the morning they didn’t come very often.

Retracing her steps she came to the corner and swept the street with a glance. Two city workers were tinkering with a fire hydrant, making a lot of noise, but there was no one else in sight. Had he flagged down a taxi? She turned around in circles, feeling more and more helpless, and then had an idea. It was a long shot, but for the time being it was the only shot she had.

She ran towards rue Dufresne, turned south as far as rue Lalonde, crossed it, and came to a stop in front of Charles’s old daycare. It had long been converted into a woodworking shop. There was a sign on the front door:

She had come here the day Charles told her about the little yellow dog. Whatever else was going on in his life, it was certain that he was going through great distress: maybe he had come here to find some peace beside his dog?

The gate to the yard was locked at that hour, so she climbed over the iron grating. Then she ran alongside the building into the yard, where piles of boards and beams were covered with large, flapping tarps to keep them from getting too much sun. At the back, to the left, now flanked by a kind of plastic garage, stood the old cherry tree under which Charles had buried the little yellow dog. Someone had tried to trim it, or had attempted to cut it down and given up, but despite the mauling it had received, and even though it was reduced now to a twisted shrub, it was still responding to the spring by valiantly sending out a spray of blossoms.

Céline uttered a cry of disappointment; there was no one under the tree. Her intuition had failed her. Then, in the pale, blueish haze of dawn, she saw someone slumped against the tree trunk on the opposite side. She moved forward, holding her breath, ready to run away at the least sign of trouble. She saw a pair of legs, and recognized the black leather boots as belonging to Charles. She kept moving ahead slowly, craning her neck forward, her eyes wide, trying to figure out what he was doing. His head was bent over his backpack, his arms were crossed, and he seemed to be staring off into space. A piece of cardboard, no doubt picked up in the yard, protected him from the wet ground.

“Charles,” she said softly.

She fell to her knees beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up, apparently not surprised to see her.

“So,” was all he said, raising his shoulders. “So it’s you the little yellow dog has sent me.… How did you know I was here?”

She smiled timidly.

“I knew.”

Then she added, “I’ve come to help you.”

“Henri told you, then?”

“Henry didn’t tell me anything. But just seeing you last night, I knew that something terrible had happened.”

“Henri doesn’t know anything … about this, anyway,” Charles went on, as though talking to himself. “No one knows … yet …”

“What is it, Charles? And where are you going like this?”

“South America.”

“South America?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I’ll hitchhike.”

“But you don’t have a passport.”

“I’ll get one. There are ways.”

She tried to say something, but her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears.

“Have you gone crazy, Charles? I …”

“Yes. Crazy.” She started to cry.

“Charles, listen to me. Please, Charles, try to calm down a bit.… Tell me what happened. I’m sure we can work something out.… All we have to do –”

“I killed an angel, Céline.”

She looked at him, stunned, wondering if she’d heard correctly.

“I killed an angel,” he said again, with bitter conviction. “We can’t work that out. It’s done. I have to go away. I can’t live here any more. Ask your parents if they’ll look after Boff. And thank them for everything they’ve done for me.”

A moment went by. She kept looking at him, not knowing what to say, wondering if he really had lost his mind.

“What angel, Charles?” she finally murmured. “I don’t understand.”

Feverishly, speaking a mile a minute, as though he had no time to lose before removing himself forever from human compassion, he told her the lamentable story, right up to the terrible conclusion she had witnessed the night before. Caught between the demands of his father and the terror
of pushing drugs, he had gone through moments of deep wretchedness, but the death of the Blond Angel had been worse than any of that. It had dirtied him forever, and the only way he could put it behind him and be forgotten by everyone was to leave the city, like the hero of some romantic fable.

She listened calmly and closely, holding back the surprise and fear that his story produced in her. All the while he was talking she was trying to think of a simple and practical idea, something she could put together with other ideas to come up with a plan of action that would pull Charles back from the brink of despair.